HomeMade Electric Airplane

Insane timeline indeed! I wish I had a work ethic like that. It's interesting how he tells that as a child, he was encouraged by his parents to "always finish his project, no matter how much you disliked it". I wonder what the reliability of this beast is like, but I guess only time will tell. If anyone is interested in this kind of stuff (fiberglassing fuselages, building cockpits...), Peter Sripol, a model plane enthusiast, made his own DIY plane that can carry a human with hobby grade brushless motors: ▶ this video

in “One man designed and built the ultimate bush plane” · View on HN

These missiles mimic the radar signature of a full sized plane. They’re extremely expensive, but can absolutely be used to force the SAMs to expend their missiles. I’m thinking of something a few orders of magnitude cheaper. Flight need not cost millions. Airfoils used for human powered flight produce planes weighing 300lbs, powered with only 300 watts. Scale this up to a 3000lbs flying bomb, using 3kw, or less than 5HP. Let it slog along at 40km/h, and in an 8 hour transit, they’ve covered over 300km. If electric, that requires just 24kwh of batteries, contained in 5 Tesla battery modules at 55lbs each, for 275lbs of batteries. Each module is around $1500 used, so $7500 in batteries. Foam and plastic wrapped wings with aluminum spars could be constructed for a few thousand dollars at scale. Add in the Mark 84 payload at $3k, and a navigation system for <$1000. Total could be well under $20k. Launched in a wave of 1000, flying at night, tens of meters off the ground to avoid radar, rising to maximum altitude prior to getting within AA range, roughly an hour before destination, this $20M swarm of 1000 2000lbs bombs needs to be neutralized by the enemy. They can only use their S-300/S-400s. Each cruise missile would be capable of taking out any ship in the Russian Black Sea fleet. Sevestapol would be a indefensible against nightly attacks launched from just 300km away in Odessa. Even Russia would eventually run out of S-300 missiles. Probably in the first night. Target the laun

in “A detailed look at the S-300P anti-aircraft missile system” · View on HN

▶ this video Just needs to be optimized to get above anti-aircraft range, and with a sufficient range. Mount a large enough bomb along with sufficient gps guidance and terminal optical guidance (make it a threat they can’t ignore) and they’ll have to shoot it down.

in “A detailed look at the S-300P anti-aircraft missile system” · View on HN

Also: A DIY electric airplane made by a hobbyist (Peter Sripol; check his channel out) ▶ this video The 7 parts build footage : [link]

in “Airplanes that fly on electricity debut at Fresno’s Chandler Airport” · View on HN